#32a/52. A Game Trilogy: Pandemic

Saturday, February 6th was the first Saturday of the month and this means it's a Meet-Up Gaming Day at Great Escape Games! This is my primary FLGS simply because it is the largest and most central game store in the Sacramento area. It has a good selection of board, card, role playing, and miniature games, friendly staff, and a large gaming area for customers to meet and play together.

Mark, our friend Frank, and I went to game day and started off the day with a game of Pandemic with the addition of the first expansion - On the Brink. Pandemic is a game by prolific game designer, Matt Leacock who created other game his such as Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert,  and his megahit, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. Pandemic is a cooperative game where all the players are working together to stop four diseases from getting out of control while simultaneously looking for a cure for them. It is the players vs. the game. If they players lose, the game wins.

Each player has a role working for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to fight and contain diseases worldwide. I know, this is one of the flaws in the game. It should be the World Health Organization (WHO) rather than the CDC because CDC operatives would not have the authority to go into foreign countries to fight disease. However, set that aside and this is really a very fun game. It requires planning, coordination, and quick reaction as the players have to react as each turn the game throws something new at them.

In this game Mark, Frank, and I happened to prevail. That is not always the case. Because it had been quite awhile since any of us had played, we did not add in the hardest part of the new expansion, the bio-terrorists - a traitor component of this expansion - or the disasters that go with that role. We'll give that a try the next time we play with it. To use that component you need to play with three or more players. We are planning to go to DunDraCon in San Ramon this coming weekend and I'm hoping to get in an epic play of this game there.